Student Question
How do short stories benefit EFL students by teaching culture and motivating learning?
Quick answer:
Many short stories provide a great deal of incidental cultural background, which is excellent material for class discussion. Finishing a short story by an established writer gives students a genuine sense of achievement, while starting one is not too daunting. The stories themselves being shorter in length can motivate students, along with the possibility of writing their own stories.
It is clear how short stories can be used to teach culture to EFL students. Simple, humorous short stories by writers such as O. Henry in the United States or Saki in the United Kingdom often contain a wealth of incidental detail about the cultures in which they are set, raising multiple points for discussion.
This cultural aspect itself is a feature that motivates students to learn, but it is not the only one. Understanding a short story can provide a real sense of achievement at an early stage in language learning, when longer and more complex pieces might prove too daunting. Even on an elementary physical level, the fact that the student is only given a few pages of English (preferably with a helpful glossary) helps to build confidence. However, when the student has completed the story, they have read and grasped an original piece of literature by a...
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respected writer, a worthwhile accomplishment in any language.
Because short stories can be completed fairly quickly, several of them may be included in a curriculum while still leaving time for class discussion of the themes and issues they raise and for activities based on them. These may include, at a more advanced level, students writing stories of their own, which is also an activity which many students find highly motivating.
Why is teaching culture an advantage of using short stories in EFL English teaching?
This question isn't completely clear, as it doesn't define "EFL." It could stand for "English as a Foreign Language," but it could also refer to "Extended Foreign Language" programs. In either case, students are learning to become proficient in speaking, reading, and writing in a second language.
Learning to read and write in a second language is just as important as learning to speak the language. A lot of vocabulary can be learned through reading. Additionally, reading stories in that second language can help educate students about cultural norms, traditions, locations, and history of the culture.
The question seems to indicate that your explanation needs to focus on the advantages of short stories over other literature pieces like poems and novels. Poems are wonderful literary pieces, but they often use abstract language, ignore grammar, and will even invert word order. Novels tend to be more complex with plot and character development, and that will cause a person new to the language to struggle with reading comprehension. The format of the short story keeps things much simpler. There are fewer characters to keep track of. The plot line is usually fairly straightforward, and authors will not spend pages describing what a beach looks like. There is less detail to bog down readers, and that is important for new language learners.
Despite being a more condensed format, short stories still do an effective job of illustrating how people speak and act in that culture. The short story often will highlight a specific place, tradition, or theme, and that is valuable to secondary language learners, because the story focuses on fewer things but does so quite clearly.